Add response validation rules

Add response validation rules in Google Forms — with three ready prompts, from the immediate task to the lasting pattern.

3prompt heights
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3 ready prompts

Written for the moment this actually comes up.

Execute — do the immediate task

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Add validation so study participants must enter an email formatted like name@school.edu for…
Add validation so study participants must enter an email formatted like name@school.edu for question 2, require ages to be whole numbers between 18 and 99 on question 5, and force the postcode field to be exactly five digits. If a value fails, show a clear error: 'Enter a valid school email', 'Age must be a whole number between 18 and 99', 'Postcode must be 5 digits.' Prevent submission until these are fixed.

Improve — make it easier to accept

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Before I send this survey to 500 alumni, surface the most likely data-entry errors and make them…
Before I send this survey to 500 alumni, surface the most likely data-entry errors and make them hard to make. Highlight which questions accept free text, require numeric input, or must match an email pattern. Add real-time validation messages for common mistakes and flag any open-text questions that probably need a drop-down instead to improve consistency.

Decide — diagnose the stuck moment

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I released the intake form and now 30 responses have '198' or '202' in the birth-year field and…

Responses show messy birth years and emails missing domain

I released the intake form and now 30 responses have '198' or '202' in the birth-year field and emails like 'jsmith' without a domain. The people involved are me, the data analyst Priya, and the participants. I don't know whether to retroactively clean the data or stop new bad responses immediately. What's the most likely cause and the fastest sequence to stop more bad data while preserving current submissions for minimal cleanup?

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Every task here came from the work, not from a feature list — which is why the prompts name what you want done and never the button that does it. The tool changes; the work does not.
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